Archive for ‘Time Management’ Category
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Organizing Secret for Working At Home
As recently as a decade ago, if you said you worked from SoHo, you’d be telling people your office was in lower Manhattan in New York City, South of Houston Street. Now, SoHo is an even more fashionable address — six steps away from the coffee maker and five steps from the front door. The SoHo of the Small Office/Home Office movement means that more and more people, whether entrepreneurial in their own businesses or teleworking for companies owned by others, are cutting their commutes (and their overhead) to work where they live.
If you’ve spent much of your career in traditional workplaces, you know how precarious the balance of interpersonal respect can be. You’ve observed the disrespect shown in shared spaces: the guy who heats up his tuna casserole in the break room, scorches the popcorn, and never makes a fresh pot of a coffee; the gal who pops her gum or taps her pen incessantly; the dude who wears headphones but hums along to his personal soundtrack; and all the people who hover in your doorway to converse as if there were an invisible water cooler drawing them near.
The appeal of a home office can seem revelatory by comparison, but it’s much harder to draw boundaries (for yourself and others) in a home office than a traditional work setting. Free of a taskmaster, it’s easy to sabotage yourself and disrespect the value of your work time. It’s vital to respect your own professionalism by setting firm boundaries, and make certain others respect them as well. Rather than stifling you, these boundaries free you to pursue your entrepreneurial dreams.
If you follow the words of the Queen of Soul and demand a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T (from yourself and others), you’ll be better able to achieve your goals.
RESPECT YOURSELF
Start with the right headspace. Try to awaken and get started at the same time each day. If your day begins by getting others out the door, you can still aim to get yourself “to the office” at a set time. Shower, groom yourself, and get dressed – you may not be on a video call, but you will see yourself in the mirror. Reflect an outward professional attitude and you’ll feel it inwardly.
Delineate the start and end of the workday. Create rituals to make the distinction. Leave the house via the front door and re-enter through a side “office” entrance. Drive to a coffee house, even when there’s perfectly good (and free) coffee in the house, and return with hot java and fresh mojo.
Be just as firm about stopping work and returning to your life and family. End the workday with a closing ritual, whether it’s a field trip to the bank or a call with your accountability buddy to set the next day’s goals.
Differentiate your schedule. Improve workflow by scheduling creative time during high-energy, uninterruptible periods, and plan low-intensity tasks during transition/buffer periods.
Remember to block time for each type of activity. Then, if your schedule goes awry (a flat tire on the way to the bank, a school nurse’s call about a sick child), a lower-priority block on any given day can be bumped or rescheduled to make room for the higher-priority category.
Control how and when you interact with others. Unexpected inbound calls can be a huge distraction. Avoid temptation by letting voicemail screen your calls during your work hours. Return personal calls during personal time. (Yes, you can have personal time during your workday, but if you plan those breaks, you run less of a risk of letting a personal conversation obliterate time you need to be spending on projects.)
Scheduling phone conversations may seem inflexible, but it can help you focus and avoid the tendency to be overly casual about your time. If you can plan for specific conversations, you’ll feel better prepared when talking with prospective clients, strategic partners, vendors, and members of the media. You will boost your self-confidence and your ability to put yourself forward as an expert.
Let technology be your gatekeeper. Social networking and web surfing offer the water cooler chat and novelty that’s missing from a home office, but it’s easy for five minutes of reward time to turn into an all-afternoon distraction. Curtail excess web surfing and block specific time-wasting sites from your browser with programs and extensions like:
- Keep Me Out
- Minutes Please
- Productivity Owl (Chrome)
- Leechblock (Firefox)
- Stay Focused (Chrome)
Freedom, Self Control (Mac), and Cold Turkey (Windows) work system-wide, so you can’t cheat by selecting a different browser.
If you’re not really sure where or how your online time disappears, Rescue Time can give you a handle on your digital habits.
Know your stimuli style. Some professionals find that “social” white noise aids in focus. If your work is portable, and the atmosphere of a public place isn’t overstimulating, work “off-site” as long as you’re productive. If the visual and olfactory stimulation of a coffee house or park is too intense, stay home and use a white noise app to create more soothing sensory inputs over which you have greater control. Check out some of the options at 11 Ways To Organized Your Focus With Ambient Noise.
Banish clutter. Many of the posts at Paper Doll talk about paper clutter, but organizing your work-related materials is only part of the process of respecting yourself and your space.
Children’s toys and your own hobby paraphernalia are distractions, even if you don’t consciously recognize them as such. Your office needs to put you in a serious, work-oriented mode. That doesn’t mean your surroundings can’t be colorful, decorative and cheery, but your space has to support your work ethic. Consider how you might scale back decorations if you shared your office with a work partner to help you identify where you might pare down the knick-knacks.
Track your successes. Solo work can be isolating. It’s easy to ruminate on shortcomings and give short shrift to small victories. Keep copies of emails of praise, bookmark congratulatory tweets, and save letters of gratitude from clients. Take a bow, and then save it all for the days when you’re feeling low to remind yourself of when you faced a challenge but pushed through!
TEACH OTHERS TO RESPECT YOU
Respecting yourself is the first step to professional success in the home office, but it’s not always easy to convince others to show you the respect you deserve.
Identify “allowed” interrupters. If your kids are at home when you’re working, assign “key personnel,” and make it a rule that only the babysitter, your spouse, or your eldest child can come to you with “issues.” (Obviously, if the absolute only time you’re able to work is during your toddler’s nap-time or you’re the only grownup home with tiny humans 24/7, all bets are off. Paper Doll salutes you.)
Schedule office hours – If your kids are old enough to not require active supervision, or your spouse or babysitter is present, schedule breaks between work sessions to address concerns and questions. But barring real emergencies (involving blood, smoke, or overflowing washing machines), limit breaks to brief designated periods, like the last ten minutes of each hour.
Think your family can’t handle this because it feels too artificial? Teachers are less prone to allow wheedled exceptions than parents, and children abide by schoolhouse rules every day. Be firm, and teach them how to recognize when things are truly urgent and/or important. Of course, this lesson is easier to impart when the tiny humans are not so tiny (or if your spouse is generally adept at impersonating an adult).
Train family members to be solution-oriented. Just as you’d do with staffers in the office, when your peeps come to you during office hours with problems, expect them to offer alternative solutions. This is quite possibly the best training you can give your kids for succeeding in the professional world.
Make your workspace less inviting. Make a clear demarcation between office and home space, just as you separate the time in your schedule. Your office is adult space; deter your kids from playing on your computer by any means necessary. If your children aren’t old enough to entertain themselves, avoid scheduling your work hours during their active playtime, and supervise them in their play areas, not your workspace. Write, email, and return phone calls during their sleep/nap times, but when they need your attention, give it completely and save work for when you can focus. Multitasking is always detrimental, and kids know when you’re not prioritizing them.
Of course, if it’s your significant other who has trouble being left unattended, dissuade hovering by giving loving a embrace and a specific promise of what you will do together (eat dinner, chat about the insurance bill, snuggle) and when. Then be sure to follow through.
Deal with Gladys Kravitz. If in-person interruptions come from lonely neighbors or chatty pals, you’ll need to do more than strictly employing Caller ID and staying away from the windows. Role-play common interruptions with your accountability buddy until you can react with aplomb.
Organize your defenses with body language. Answer the doorbell with the phone in your hand, as if you’re on a call; if you’re a stickler for honesty, consider your task list and recognize that you might be about to place a call. Right? Of course.
Stand firmly in the doorway, hold your phone and perhaps a file folder, smile apologetically, and explain that you’re in the middle of a work project and are on deadline. Suggest they can call after dinner. Do NOT let the person in unless it’s an emergency. (Gossip isn’t an emergency unless it’s celebrity gossip and you’re a gossip columnist.)
Speak like a professional. Let friends and neighbors know that your office being comfortably situated doesn’t limit how seriously you take your career. Help them see that you are serious. If someone implies your work is a hobby, or that you have more flexibility because you don’t have a “real” job, smile if you must, but speak pointedly about tax deductions, returns-on-investment, and how office space rental pricing would cut into profits. Bore them, if necessary. Worried their feelings will be hurt? Ask yourself if they’d be willing to pay your bills if you didn’t make your revenue target this quarter.
Stick to your guns. Know how to respond when others have stepped on your toes. Whether it’s your mother or your neighbor or your kids, their unwillingness to recognize your business as “real” is merely an excuse for not getting things done. You have to train others to respect your boundaries. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
If you take your business, your priorities, your time, and your space seriously, and lead by example, your family, friends, colleagues, and clients will do so as well.
~~~
Portions of this post were taken from my book, 57 Secrets for Organizing Your Small Business. While it is currently out of distribution, I hope to have a second edition available in the near future.
Paper Doll Post:
Organizing Your Writing for NaNoWriMo and More
November is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo. This annual project/contest gives writers (and aspiring writers) the opportunity to be part of a collective push to focus creative energies on an endeavor they might otherwise put off until “someday” (a date notoriously absent from the calendar).
As the NaNoWriMo site explains, “On November 1, participants begin working towards the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 PM on November 30. Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.” The official program includes social mechanisms for sharing your progress, and badges for participation, writing, and even “to celebrate the peaks and valleys of your personal creative journey.”
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- National Novel Writing Month
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- National Non-Fiction Writing Month
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- National Academic Writing Month
Not a budding novelist? No problem. There are a few different November writing programs for non-fiction, including author/coach Nina Amir’s Write Nonfiction in November, called NaNonFiWriMo. It can be used to write one long non-fiction project, or, as she describes in this article for Writer’s Digest, you could also write 30 blog posts, essays or articles. If you’re a professor or an academic researcher who really needs to publish (and not perish), there’s Academic Writing Month, created by Dr. Charlotte Frost and run through PhD2Published.
The key element of NaNoWriMo and most of its sister programs is that it’s about eliminating all of the things that keep writers — the experienced and aspiring kinds — from actually writing: procrastination, self-criticism, and fear. The writing period in November is just that, for writing — there’s no editing. It’s just about putting your tush in the chair (or, I suppose, your feet in front of the standing desk).
The idea of organizing for a writing project may not seem like an apt comparison to typical organizing jobs. Usually, our goal is to take the chaos of a closet or a desktop and create order. We remove excess, sort the essentials, and group items so they are functional, accessible, and hopefully, somewhat aesthetically pleasing. Applying organizing principles to writing involves similar skills. Yes, the blank piece of paper (or blank screen) is daunting, but think of it as an already-cleared guest room or newly acquired shelving unit. You can clear all the clutter (of characters, plotlines, research, etc.) from your head, and start arranging them in ways that provide order.
This post will look at some strategies for organizing your research and planning resources, overcoming procrastination and writer’s block, and maintaining motivation.
CREATING YOUR ROAD MAP
NaNoWriMo has a variety of resources available for fiction writers, including the basics of getting started writing and ideas on the nuts and bolts of the fiction-writing process, covering characters and backstories, plot development and conflict, and setting and world-building. Academic Writing Month has a participant toolkit and an accountability spreadsheet.
Beyond planning to participate in a writing contest or program, you need to plan your writing. Saying you want to “write a book” or even a blog post, without preparation, has little more validity than deciding you want to be an astronaut. Think of it like going on a trip. Whether you use a gas station map or Grandpa’s hand-written directions or Siri’s intriguingly articulated GPS, you need guideposts to make sure you are on the right path. Depending on your writing project, you might start by creating documents to support your work:
Fiction
- character breakdown
- genealogy chart or Venn diagram of relationships between characters
- major plot points or events
- list of conflicts and their resolutions
- list of problems you’ve not yet figured out how to solve
Non-Fiction
- major concepts or themes
- sub-topics
- hypotheses to be tested or hypothetical questions needing answers
- brainstormed list of blog, article or chapter titles
- links or locations of digital or hard-copy references
Make sure this material is easily accessible to you in whatever format you like best. You might prefer to put together a three-ring notebook with dividers and pages for each resource element, so if you need to be mobile and write in different locations, your resources can go with you. If you’re visual and tactile, you might turn a wall, mirror or door into a planning board with Post-It Notes. (Use your digital device to snap a photo each day and keep that information accessible from anywhere.)
Prefer more tech? As someone who thinks linearly, I used Workflowy’s outline format to write 57 Secrets for Organizing Your Small Business. (Read more about Workflowy in the classic Paper Doll post, Don’t Be Listless…Be Listy (And Happy!) With Workflowy.)
Almost every lover of Evernote expounds on the possibilities of writing a book using Evernote. This recent blog post from Digital Inspiration shows how my beloved Trello‘s card system would work for writing a book. The web is full of recommendations for apps for planning and writing for NaNoWriMo:
5 Best Productivity Apps for NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo: The Best Writing Apps and Accessories for iPhone and iPad!
The Big Thread of Writers’ Mobile Apps
The Best Apps To Write, Plan & Plot Your NaNoWriMo Novel
Prepare for NaNoWriMo with Evernote
SETTING THE STAGE
Plan when you are going to write. Have you never, ever been able to go to a 6 a.m. exercise class? Don’t imagine you’ll be any more enticed to leave your warm bed to write. Think about when you are usually the most motivated, most creative, and most clear-thinking, and block time on the calendar as a fixed appointment each day as a firm commitment. Then consider a Plan B time period as a contingency for days when no matter how committed you are, emergencies force you to break your stride. Having a back-up in place means you won’t be tempted to argue with yourself or break the chain.
Do your Hokey Pokey. Assemble your resources before your appointed writing time. Need eleven sharpened Number 2 pencils? Require your coffee in your World’s Best Writer mug? Gotta shake yourself about? Great, but remember to schedule time to accomplish all of your pre-writing rituals so that nothing cuts into your writing time.
Save the environment. Personally, I can’t concentrate when I’m warm, but research shows that knowledge workers are half as productive when the thermostat is set at 68° as at 77°. Know what temperature works best for you.
Watch the ergonomics of your set-up, and avail yourself of the best task lighting so you aren’t dependent on ambient light. Reread my post 11 Ways To Organize Your Focus With Ambient Noise so you can minimize auditory distractions.
Create your theme song. Go through your music collection for songs that inspire you to greatness. Set an alarm to have your cell phone play a motivating anthem a few minutes before your posterior needs to be in the chair. Try the theme from Rocky, Rachel Platten’s Fight Song, Queen’s We Will Rock You, Jon Bon Jovi’s It’s My Life, or whatever puts you in an “I Can Do It” mode.
Make the world go away. Chances are good that you won’t have more than half an hour or an hour to dedicate to writing most days — your family and friends and telemarketers can wait. Close the door, set your instant messaging status to unavailable and set your phone to Do Not Disturb. (Just remember to reverse the process as the final ritual when you’re done writing for the day.)
Write. When the planned time arrives, grab your pen and your keyboard and start writing. Don’t wait for motivation.
OVERCOMING WRITER’S BLOCK
I wrote an entire chapter on conquering writer’s block in my book, but I have two favorite tips that always work for me, and my clients report that if they actually sit in the chair instead of making phone calls or surfing the net or doing other busy work, the words will come.
Write to an imaginary pen pal. Sometimes, you know too much about a topic to get a handle on where to start. Begin with “Dear Buddy/Pal/George Clooney, I am trying to write my [article, book, etc.]. It’s generally about [overarching idea]. I’m trying to bring together [list one to five major categories or concerns]. For example…” and then just free-write and talk about the subject. Don’t worry about grammar or fret about logical connections. Just concentrate on creating understanding. Because it’s not the monumental THING (the book, project, etc.) that’s at stake here, but merely telling a random someone about the thing, so that omnipresent fear of failure — what usually keeps our brains in a tizzy — dissipates. And remember, your word count in this email or letter counts towards your 50,000 words!
Do nothing. Seriously. A whole LOT of nothing. Set a timer for 30 minutes (or a 25-minute pomodoro, if that’s your style), and block all distracting stimuli. Face a blank pad or empty screen, but don’t write. You may have to sit on your hands, but do not, under any circumstances, write. You have no idea how slowly time passes when you’re staring at nothing, forbidden to create. Your thoughts may wander a bit, but by the end of the half-hour, your brain will be fairly bursting with ideas and you’ll be chomping at the bit to start writing. If your writing time is severely limited and this option would mean no word count for the day, you can reduce the “nothing” time by half, but the longer you have to sit, squirming, the more likely you’ll break through your block.
TRACKING YOUR PROGRESS
NaNoWriMo and related programs are more for the push to get something down on paper without the paralysis of self-analysis or editing, so the focus is on word count (and just doing it) more than anything else. Certainly, not all of your writing projects will be centered on quantity vs. quality, but there’s always something motivating about knowing where you stand in relationship to your goals.
Count your words. Almost all word processing programs have a word count generator. For example, Microsoft Word automatically counts the number of pages and words in your document and displays them on the status bar at the bottom of the workspace.
If you put your cursor at the end of the page, it will show you how many words, total, you’ve written. If you put the cursor at any given point, it will tell you the word count from the beginning (of the document or section) to that point. As you type, the word count will increase; as you erase or self-edit, the word count will decrease. (But you’re supposed to be writing, not editing!)
If you prefer to just have a word count for a particular paragraph or section, highlight that section and right-click (on Mac, Control-Click) to get a word count for that portion only. If you prefer, you can insert the word count in your document. (For Mac, use Insert>Field>Document Information>NumWords.) Similarly, in Google Docs, select Word Count under the Tools menu.
Each type of word processing or writing program will have its own word count generator, so check your help menu. Of course, if you’re using a bare bones program or even a blank email page, you can always copy and paste what you’ve written into a free online word count program like Wordcounter or WordCountTool or WordCounterTool. Just be sure to copy (and not cut) your words, and aim to do your counts after you’ve already spent your allotted time on writing.
Track your word count. As with your choice of writing implement or resource format, how you track is less important than that you do track. Knowing what you’ve done helps motivate what you will do in the future.
Productivity genius Dave Seah created a free template for a downloadable NaNoWriMo Word Counting Calendar. (Dave also makes a 12-month word-counting calendar, so keep your eyes on his inspiring site.)
©2015 Dave Seah, Investigative Designer
Share your word count. Make it your Twitter name for the day. Post it as a Facebook status. Put it in the subject line or signature of your non-work emails.
MAINTAINING MOTIVATION
We tend to be good (sometimes, too good) at fulfilling our obligations to others but fall down on giving our own goals and needs the same respect. If outside pressure and validation motivates you, go with it. (This may not be the time to castigate yourself for how much you care about other people’s opinions.)
Get an accountability buddy. This may be another author, or it just might be a friend or colleague who is uplifting, supportive, and generally has a good sense of stick-to-it-ive-ness. Set an alarm (or ask your buddy to do so) to ensure a daily check-in via phone, text, or email to not only discuss successes, but also challenges. Brainstorm together how you can conquer difficulties.
I once spent days trying to solve a problem with a chapter I was writing. I called my colleague Deb Lee about an unrelated project, but mentioned the cognitive obstacle I was having in finding an angle for the chapter. I’m not sure Deb had a chance to exhale before I started spitting ideas at her, and by the end of the five-minute “conversation,” the problem was solved — without Deb ever getting to say a word. (She’s just THAT good!) Sometimes, when my brain is clogged, I just pull up her photo on the screen and the thoughts flow.
Brandie Kajino, Deb Lee & moi at the NAPO Conference 2011, acting out social media platforms.
Make a public commitment. Use social media to let your friends and colleagues know that you’re participating in NaNoWriMo or a similar writing project. Join the online forums and communities for your writing projects — a quick Googling should find the right group for your particular genre or field.
Most people will cheer you on and provide support. But, as with the Deb example above, sometimes it’s just the idea of someone that gives you what you need.
Use your down time (not your writing time) to embrace support. NaNoWriMo has official coaches tweeting inspiration from the NaNoWriMo Twitter account, and there’s even a recorded video of the prep webinar to give you a boost of motivation.
Post your WHY. Outside motivation is fine, but as with any organizing project, nothing can have lasting success unless the motivation comes from inside. Maybe you want fame and fortune. Perhaps you need publishing citations to ascend the professional ladder. Or it’s possible you just want to know you can do it. All of those reasons are good enough if they are YOUR reasons for doing it.
GOOD LUCK. GOOD WRITING!
50,000 words. That sounds like a lot. But 1666 words per day, or maybe a little more if you plan to skip Turkey Day? Well, obviously the Paper Doll blog is non-fiction, but as you may have noticed, my posts tend to run fairly long, and often far exceed that number. This ridiculously long post is 2500 words, and I wrote it in one sitting, counting research!
You can do it. Organize yourself for a fabulous month of writing!
Paper Doll Post:
Pick Your Planner 2015: Paper Doll Rounds Up the (Un)Usual Suspects
On the cusp of a new year, it’s time to start entering important dates (birthdays, appointments, meetings, vacations, conferences, National Doughnut Day, etc.) into your planning system. Strictly speaking, a calendar is just a chart showing you the days, weeks and months. A planner is a tool for combining your calendar with your task list and other essential information to make your life more productive.
A few years ago, I offered up a less philosophical, more practical, discussion in Paper Doll Pencils You In On Her Calendar: 6 Tips for Planning 2011, with the most apt advice I could possibly give:
Surprised that people still use paper planners? Canadian professional organizer Clare Kumar explains five reasons why paper planners will never go away. Clare mentions the sensory aspects (you can see more at once, customize the look to appeal to your aesthetic preferences, and make your planner feel good), and notes that you can be grid-independent — the availability of electricity, internet and Wi-Fi are non-essential in the workings of a paper planner.
But it was Clare’s note about the nature of handwriting vs. typing that caught my attention. This year, we’ve discussed, at length, the research indicating that handwriting leads to greater learning and recall. Certainly the point of using a planner is that if you write something down, you can stop thinking of it, per se, and start thinking more robustly and contextually about it. Somehow, dragging an email into Outlook to set a meeting, or typing an appointment into your phone, leads to an out-of-sight, out-of-mind situation for many, but with a tangible paper planner, every time you eyeball your month or your week, you are speedily, comfortingly reminded of the important aspects your life.
Of course, knowing that you want a paper planner is only the beginning. You still have to know the style that’s right for you, and then there are a myriad number of options from which to choose.
RING-BOUND
While there have always been calendars, planners are a relative modern invention from the 1980’s onward. The Yuppies had their Filofaxes, DayRunners and Franklin Planners. (Disclosure: Paper Doll still uses a Franklin Planner: Classic size, Seasons theme, two-page-a-day version.)
Ring-bound planners have heft — it’s a binder, with pages for monthly, weekly and daily planning. That heft has always meant lots of options — you can pick-and-choose the elements of your planner — but your choices were generally confined to the binder size to which you’d already committed. I can switch to the Franklin Planner Monticello theme or the anniversary edition “Original” in a berry pink that matches the branding of my website, blog and business cards, but I still have to stick with the “Classic” sized planner unless I want to start from scratch.
I direct you to Ana Reinert of The Well-Appointed Desk and her recent six-part series, A Beginner’s Dive Into Ring-Bound Planners:
Ana may consider it a beginner’s dive, but by the time you reach the deep end, you’ll have explored all of the oceans of ring-bound planners.
BOOK-BOUND
Book-style planners require serious commitment. There’s generally no customizing, you have to start anew each year, and if your wealth of ideas (and scribblings) exceed the number of available pages, you’re out of luck. However, the features available in many of the modern book-style planners are creative as well as practical, making options possibly outweigh lack of expandability. Three recent alternatives worth considering include:
Evernote Weekly Planner by Moleskine
The Evernote Weekly Planner by Moleskine has a lot in common with its cousin, a notebook we discussed at length in An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine. This 5″ x 8 1/4″, 144-page, dot-ruled planner is designed so that you can enter information by hand and use your iOS Evernote Camera app to snap a picture of a planner page, categorize the information (with the help of special, colorful “smart stickers” to tag your notes), and sync in Evernote, across all your devices. The hard cover binding has a custom Evernote design, and the interior rear cover has a paper pocket for storing loose items, like business cards or receipts.
Evernote is able to recognize your handwriting, so you can search within captured photos for specific text you’ve entered by hand. You can even check a box in the upper right corner of any particular date on a calendar page, and Evernote will flag that day as a reminder.
The Evernote Weekly Planner by Moleskine runs $34.95, and you get three months of free Evernote Premium included with the purchase.
Passion Planner bills itself as “An appointment calendar, goal setting guide, journal, sketchbook, gratitude log & personal and work to-do lists all in one notebook.“ Whew.
The black, book-bound, soft-cover binding comes in two sizes: 8 1/2″ x 11″ and 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″. The Passion Planner has a traditional weekly layout, with seven columns for each day of the week, broken down by appointment slots, but fits in a lot of extra space for other areas of life.
But beyond this, of the Passion Planner’s 190 pages, there are annual and monthly overview calendars, a goal-setting guide to aid brainstorming for lifetime, 3-year, 1-year, and one-month goals, and monthly check-in “reflection questions” to gauge progress, consider gratitude and create steps for improvement. There are also 20 additional blank pages and gridded pages for free writing and drawing.
You can see the 2015 Passion Planner in action, page by page. This successful Kickstarter project can be purchased for $30-$40, depending on size, at the Passion Planner site.
Also, if you’re not ready to commit to the Passion Planner, itself, you can print some sample pages to use for free.
Spark Notebook, a Kickstarter project that raised ten times its initial goal, is almost the flip-side of the Passion Planner. If the latter is for right-brained, creative types, Spark Notebook is more for the linear, left-brained among us.
Instead of mind-maps, there are grids and lists, (undated) monthly and weekly goal, project planning and meeting notes pages, 30-day challenges, weekly overviews for time-blocking tasks, lined pages for note-taking, and even perforated blank pages for sharing notes with others. (Of course, this is where a snap with your phone would make more sense.)
You can click to peek inside the Spark Notebook and see page-by-page of how the 5 3/4″ x 8 1/4″ planner works. The planner is 216 acid-free pages with a lay-flat binding, and was priced at $28/each during the Kickstarter campaign.
WIRE-BOUND
Wire-bound planners generally use twin-loop wire binding and flexible covers, and are meant to be used for one calendar year and then replaced; any information that needs to be maintained must be hand-copied to the next year’s planner. However, they’re less expensive than binder alternatives and far more lightweight.
Beyond that, because wire-bound planners are minimally customizable, they sometimes have a reputation as tame and impersonal. Book-bound planners are often seen as elegant; ring-bound planners may be sophisticated or sassy, depending on customization. But wire-bound planners tend to remind most people of dentist-office receptionist’s calendars.
Of course, that needn’t be the case. Even when you’re talking about the grand-daddy of wire-bound paper planners, Mead’s At-A-Glance, precision doesn’t have to be boring:
Of course, whether you’re looking at name-brand, store-brand or generic planners, the thing to note about most wire-bound planners is that they tend to be for planning appointments and fixed-date events, and less about setting goals, brainstorming projects or doing complex, long-range planning. One exception is the surprisingly little-known, but nonetheless fiercely loved, funnel-based Planner Pads, with space for categorizing project specifics, prioritizing daily activities and scheduling time- and date-specific appointments.
And, if your recollection of Planner Pads is that they are, like most wire-bound planners, fairly black-and-white (literally and figuratively), check out their recent upgrade to brightly colored, seasonal themed planners.
DO-IT-YOURSELF
Not everyone is satisfied with a single-universe planner. When I asked my Twitter followers, I was surprised to find how many people, like Unclutterer‘s Erin Doland, were creating their own planners, mixing and matching formats from different environments.
@ProfOrganizer Staples Arc and the Emergent Task Planner for my daily goal setting
— Erin Doland (@erdoland) December 11, 2014
Many DIY-ers like Erin are customizing notebooks to fit their unique needs and styles. Ring-bound planner users have a variety of free options available on the web, like PrintablePlanners.net‘s seven sizes of page additions (Executive, Desktop, Travel, Personal, Pocket, Hipster, Mini), with basic monthly, weekly, daily, project and task planning pages, as well as journals, spending logs, Cornell Note-taking pages, and more.
Lately, one of the more common way to adapt a planner is to use a customizable notebook, where you select the cover pieces, page elements and accessories, and join them together with discs that hold the specially-punched paper and elements together, or otherwise employ a unique binding system.
Levenger Punch
Ampad Punch
The high-end of the scale would be something like the Levenger Circa System, but we’ve also covered more affordable options in past posts, including:
- NAPO Expo 2012 Recap (Part 1) — Paper Lovers’ Dreams Come True (Staples’ Arc System)
- Customizable Notebooks: Have It Your Way…Sorta (YoonCo’s Sorta)
- Presto, Change-o! NAPO Expo 2013 Shape-shifting Organizing Products #3: Ampad Versa Crossover (Ampad Versa Crossover)
With the cover and binding options in place, you can choose in-system elements, like daily/weekly/monthly calendar pages, project planner refill pages, blank (lined or graph) paper, and so on. Alternatively, you might pick solutions from outside your planner’s universe. Erin, for example, uses the Emergent Task Planner from David Seah’s impressive array of productivity tools.
D*I*Y* Planner also has a huge compendium of template elements for use in ring-bound and disc-bound planners. You may also want to review MakeUseOf‘s recent article, 7 Single-Page Productivity Planners To Organize Your To-Do List for more planning element solutions to add to your calendar/planner. And, of course, any planner page or element created for one format can generally be used for the other with the help of a format-specific hole-punch.
YOUR IDEAL PLANNER
In the end, the best planner for you is the one you’ll pick up, carry with you, and use all the time, day-in and day-out. Only you know whether you need bright colors and mind-mapping pages or serious tones and refined lists. Leather, faux-leather or Hello Kitty pink plastic? Un-dated calendars and blank pages or dated calendars with pre-created themes and prompting language? One universe or a blending of many?
If you use a paper planner, feel free to share in the comments and let us know what works for you. And however you plan your 2015, may it be a happy and healthy one!
Paper Doll Post:
House of Doolittle: Doing Much for the Environment & Time Management (A Shoplet Review)
Periodically Paper Doll reviews new and established office supplies and accessories through the Shoplet Product Review Program. This week, we’ll be looking at two products from the House of Doolittle.
I must admit, although I’ve written about recycled products many times before, I was unfamiliar with House of Doolittle, a 95-year-old office supply company that makes 100% post-consumer paper products, including desk pads, appointment planners, wall calendars, laminated planners, non-dated planning supplies, and USA and international maps.
In 1988, House of Doolittle made the commitment to produce all of their products from recycled paper and materials, eventually converting to recycled cover materials and book wire, soy inks, and Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) and FSC-certified paper. All House of Doolittle products are manufactured in the United States.
The House of Doolittle Weekly Expense Log Business Planner harkens back to a pre-app era when most professionals kept track of time and tasks using paper planners. Paper Doll, with one foot in the paper realm and the other in cyberspace, still maintains a paper planner, and can see the appeal of having a small, tangible planner where one can quickly schedule appointments, check information and log expenses without need for Wi-Fi or charged batteries.
The Basics: This 7″ x 10″ wire-bound planner uses the two-page-per week style, with Monday through Thursday blocks on the left-side page with lines for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. standard workday appointments. The right-side page offers the same for Friday through Sunday, as well as a chart for keeping expense records for the week, with columns for Sunday through Saturday and rows for standard travel expenses (like meals, hotel, tips and parking) and typical weekly expenses (like postage, phone, entertainment, auto, gas and miscellaneous). The right-side page also has three small insets at the top, showing monthly calendars for the prior, current and next months.
The black leatherette cover is made of 50% recycled materials; the twin-loop wire binding is made from 90% recycled wire.
The Business Planner doesn’t skimp on extras. Trying hard not to be outdone by the whole of the internet, bonus pages include three-year holiday listings, area codes, time zones, toll-free numbers for airlines, car rental companies and hotels, air and driving mileage distances between major cities, weights and measures, metric conversions, recycling information, monthly birthstones/flowers and an annual anniversary gift list. (Whew!)
The Review: This type of planner is ideal for someone who needs to mark appointments and expenses but has relatively few notes to make regarding either. The space for each day is ample for charting the bare essentials (the who/where/why) of appointments, but with only two small rows for each hour, meeting notes are meant to be taken elsewhere.
Thus, it’s well-designed for what it’s meant to do, but professionals needing more robust planning pages would do well to upgrade from the weekly planner to a daily planner; those wanting House of Doolittle’s environmental commitment but seeking to schedule appointments more frequently than hourly might want to examine their Professional Hardcover Weekly Planner, with time frames on the quarter hour.
As a professional organizer, my biggest concern with the planner was the expense record section. Although the two-page spread for the calendar goes from Monday to Sunday, the expense section runs from Sunday to Saturday. Should the Sunday in the expense planner refer to the expenses from the prior page? Why don’t the days line up? It’s a small issue, and as long as the user sticks to the same recording method all the time, it’s not problematic, but it does seem confusing. Also, as with most paper expense planners, there’s only one slot per expense category per day, so you have to do your math first before recording anything, which may not be preferable.
The Business Planner runs about $17 at Shoplet for an individual planner, and is under $10 if you purchase in bulk.
The House of Doolittle 2014 Calendar is what Paper Doll used to call a desk blotter in ye olden days, and lets you view the whole month at one glance.
The Basics: The 18.5″ x 13″ January to December calendar, designed to be posted on a wall or used as a desk blotter, has a dark blue leatherette top-band and bottom corners to hold the pages in place. Each perforated page identifies the month, has squares for each weekday (Sunday through Saturday) with count-up/count down numbers (so you know you’ve got only 337 more days until 2015!) and twelve tiny monthly calendars at the bottom. There’s a wide section at the far right for jotting down notes, phone numbers and other incidentals.
The 2014 Calendar is made from 100% post-consumer paper and soy inks, and is made entirely in the USA.
The Review: When Paper Doll worked in television programming, having a desk pad calendar was indispensable for viewing the month at one shot and noting important events without having to look up from the desk. I’d forgotten how useful that was until I examined the House of Doolittle 2014 Calendar.
I think this calendar, which is smaller than the typical desk blotter by a handful of inches, would be perfect for kitchen desks, which tend to be cramped, and for students/bedroom desks, to maintain an eagle-eye view of when assignments and tests are scheduled. The only flaw I note is that the smaller pad size means that the squares for each day are reduced, and perhaps a bit cramped for those of us with sprawling handwriting. Nonetheless, it’s a spiffy little calendar for under $9 (under $6 if you buy in bulk).
Both the House of Doolittle Business Planner and 2014 Calendar, and many others HoD products, are available directly from Shoplet, which also maintains a colorful and often goofy blog about office supplies. Shoplet is also an excellent source for business promotional products, including promotional shirts. In addition to selling office supplies in North America, Shoplet is a purveyor of office stationery in the UK.
Disclosure: I received these products for review purposes only, and was given no monetary compensation. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?) The planner and calendar will be donated to a Chattanooga-area non-profit.
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